Conversation and Thought

The most important part of any conversation is the silence. For speaking is thought translated into verbal symbols, and thought is by definition a silent, private activity of the soul. Thus, a conversation consisting only, or even primarily, of words flying back and forth involves little speaking in the strict sense, but only talking, much as Wilde wrote that a woman who cannot make her mistakes charming is only a female. Hence, two people who cannot be silent together — that great majority today for whom sitting quietly in front of one another, in prolonged moments of reflection or reorganization that lead to insights about the essence of the matter and how to frame it, is a discomfort — can barely hope to converse at all. This, we may say, is why almost all group conversations tend to devolve into trivial gossip, trivial one-upmanship, or trivial laughter. Extra talkers means extra noise to fill any available spaces, and therefore less thought. Without fresh and ever-developing ideas, and those lightning bolts of striking associations that propel a good conversation to ever-higher levels of understanding and enjoyment, the would-be speakers are left with nothing to express but whatever stale crumbs of information happen to be left in the corners in their dormant minds, or occasional faint echoes of past thinking, as though substituting flowers pressed in a book three years ago for the lively colors and scents of a freshly cut bouquet.